


We Are Forged in Blood and Violence (We Are Family and Lovers)

by ArtsyDeath



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, BAMF Barbara Gordon, Barbara Gordon is Oracle, Belonging, Canon Disabled Character, Complicated Relationships, Dick Grayson is Nightwing, Domestic, Healing, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Torture, Jason Todd is Red Hood, Multi, Polyamory, Protective Dick Grayson, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-11
Updated: 2019-09-11
Packaged: 2020-10-14 17:23:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20604500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArtsyDeath/pseuds/ArtsyDeath
Summary: This is the situation: Jason never killed the Penguin, Bruce still violently beats his son, and Roy Harper climbs the roof in the rain to touch the still figure with gentle hands before carefully slipping his arm beneath a broad back, the other beneath a pair of limp legs, lifting Jason gently with a press of lips against his forehead, mouth moving in feverish prayer as he takes him away.Barbara watches the recording on loop afterwards, hands folded over her mouth, her apartment dark.It’s been nearly four weeks and no one has seen or heard a single word about the Red Hood since the happening.-Or: Jason finds his home after everything.





	We Are Forged in Blood and Violence (We Are Family and Lovers)

This is the situation: Jason never killed the Penguin, Bruce still violently beats his son, and Roy Harper climbs the roof in the rain to touch the still figure with gentle hands before carefully slipping his arm beneath a broad back, the other beneath a pair of limp legs, lifting Jason gently with a press of lips against his forehead, mouth moving in feverish prayer as he takes him away.

Barbara watches the recording on loop afterwards, hands folded over her mouth, her apartment dark.

It’s been nearly four weeks and no one has seen or heard a single word about the Red Hood since the happening.

Jason Todd’s twentieth birthday passes without a single acknowledgement inside the Wayne Mansion.

-

Barbara couldn’t claim she’d been close with Jason.

Dick is, and was, her Robin – she hadn’t had time to care about the scrappy new kid Batman had brought in, full of bravery but also darkness, skittish and stubborn at the same time.

_Crime Alley_, she’d thought, the first time she’d met him, and she hadn’t been wrong.

But then he’d been dead, only fifteen-years-old, beaten to death by the Joker, and she’d tasted the reality of it in the empty gaze of Bruce when she stepped by the mansion’s cold, silent walls, and then in Dick’s arms wrapping desperately around her in search of comfort that she didn’t know how to bring.

She hadn’t disliked the kid, had joked about him with Dick on nights when they were Nightwing and Batgirl, shoulders brushing and a light sort of teasing between them.

_Cute,_ she’d called him.

All yellow boots and green tights, things that had brought her admiration when she was younger and following Batman and Robin on the television screen, but were now undeniably childish.

_Cute,_ that was the extension of the feeling she’d extended to him. And then he was _dead_.

There wasn’t much to admire in the pale, ruined corpse of a boy being lowered into the ground and she finds herself only with a strange sense of regret.

-

Getting hold of Roy Harper’s number isn’t easy but it isn’t hard either but she doesn’t make the call – not yet.

There’s always some excuse – she’s not only part of the bat family anymore, she has other responsibilities, her Birds of Prey among them, and there’s always something that needs solved, fixed.

There’d been a part of her life when she’d feared she’d been reduced to nothing but she’d clawed herself back from the brutality of what Joker had inflicted and she’d made herself anew, _better._

But it had taken time. To come to terms with and reclaim her body as her own.

The world was judgemental and pitying but she’d done it anyway and Oracle was her creation and she wore her title proudly and bared her teeth at any who dared to look at her differently.

Barbara looks at Jason the first time she meets him after the resurrection and she knows that Jason hasn’t come to terms with being alive again, hadn’t been given the time, hadn’t given himself time, and the rage that burned like a frothing and violent thing in his gaze was the reality of it.

Jason Todd as Robin had blue eyes.

Jason Todd as the Red Hood was tainted by a madness of green that lurked and grew and rippled with his violent moods that rose to tear and claw and make hurt of the world he’d suffered in.

And Bruce still mourned the boy he’d been and couldn’t accept what he’d become.

-

Barbara watches the recording on loop afterwards, hands folded over her mouth, her apartment dark.

She sees a boy with hurt and bravado in his eyes daring his father to find love in ruin.

And she sees Bruce tear the boy down further, breaking his bones in an echo of the man who’d killed the fifteen-year-old that had been with a violence even rarely shown to his worst enemies.

Love is cruel, love is blind, love is _pain._

It’s been nearly four weeks and no one has heard or seen a single word about the Red Hood since the happening.

-

Dick sets off her silent alarm when he drops into her clock tower and Barbara silently turns it off and secures her gun, eyebrow raised as he drops himself face-first into her couch with nary a hello.

He’s in full Nightwing get-up, tall but not quite as broad as Bruce, had always been limber and had the youth that Batman lacked these days.

Bruce is in his fifties, he might not like admitting it to himself but age came with its problems and Barbara notes but makes no talk of the way his reaction time has slowed down.

He’s still far above average, is still terrifying and a force to be reckoned with in the Justice League, but he had Damian now and Barbara knows who is going to be shouldering the mantle of the Batman as soon as he’s grown to fill out the shoulders of the suit.

Nightwing didn’t want it, Red Hood certainly couldn’t claim it, and it was only a matter of time before Tim stretched from the chains of Red Robin.

Gotham will always need Batman but Bruce Wayne is getting old and he’s getting tired and he has a blood son now and Damian would lay claim to the legacy of the Wayne family as was his right once he was old enough to bear it.

Barbara looks at Dick and gives a sigh before rolling into the kitchen to make them both a cup of tea.

“I saw him,” Dick mumbles into the pillows when she returns, placing the tray down. He turns his head just enough to look at her and there’s something dark in his eyes that look misplaced but certainly isn’t. “Jason,” he clarifies, as if he needs to.

“He’s recovered then?”

A small shrug but he’s pushing up and he pours for them both unprompted, slumping forward as he rubs at his brow.

“He was angry.”

“When is he not?” Barbara asks, dropping three cubes of sugar into his tea and giving it a stir before taking her own cup.

“Not-“ Dick inhales and breathes out. “Not like this. He’s always been – verbal in his feelings. But he was- It wasn’t-“ He quiets and Barbara allows him the time to work through what he wanted to say. “I know I didn’t do right by Jay when he was young- was busy elsewhere, wasn’t the best brother. But I still loved him – he’s still _family._ Seeing him alive again, I wanted to do better by him, but I fear that I’ve failed him once again.”

“Because of what Bruce did.”

“He _flinched._” Barbara’s eyes narrow at him. “I was going to put a hand on his shoulder and he _flinched_ and then he bared his teeth at me like a rabid dog.”

Silence ticks between them and Barbara pushes his tea closer and he takes it, taking a sip with a little grimace and grabbing for two more cubes before leaning back with it.

“It was like… he expected me to do the same,” Dick squeezes out. “He was angry but he was also terrified, Barb. Of _me._”

“Dick-“

“I’ve always defended Bruce, _always._ Even when I know he wasn’t always right but I couldn’t say _anything_ looking at Jaybird like that. How am I supposed to defend a father beating his son to near death when we’ve put criminals in jail for lesser?”

He looks at her and her heart clenches at the wetness of his eyes. “I don’t know what to do,” he confesses, quietly. “I love Bruce but I love Jay too and what happened wasn’t right.”

“It wasn’t,” she agrees quietly, a secret just between the two of them in a shared understanding.

-

The first time Barbara sees Red Hood after what had gone down between him and Batman he’s kicking and cursing, fighting against zip ties anchoring his arms behind his back and there's an ugly bruise blossoming on his cheek.

Dick kicks the door shut behind them, wrestling with a wild creature with madness in the green of his eyes and a frothing, wild, violence as he collides hard with the ground on his side.

“What the fuck, Dick-“ Jason gasps, struggling to get onto his knees only to have himself grasped and hauled to his feet, Nightwing dodging out of his path when he wrenched around, intent on digging his shoulder into his chest.

“I told you-“ Dick grits out. “That I just want to talk- oh, hey Babs,” he greets, spotting her with a cup of coffee half-raised to her lips.

Jason swivels around, betrayal in his gaze when he focuses upon her, a flash of fear, sweat making his shirt damp as he draws one breath after the other, muscles straining against the fabric and he takes a step back – colliding against the wall.

“What the fuck- what the fuck, what the fuck, what the _fuck_!?” Jason snarls, a tremble running through his body, bound and helpless between the two of them.

“You better have a good explanation for this,” Barbara tells Dick and his shoulders tenses, sensing the warning for all that her voice remains mild.

“Hello, Jason,” she greets the cornered boy who bares his teeth. “Long time no see.”

And- she realises it’s wrong to call him boy, for all that he will always be young and a bit lost in her eyes. Broad, tall, muscles heavily defined even beneath the shirt he was wearing and a blossoming bruise on his cheek.

He’s not _her_ Robin, but he was _a_ Robin, had died as one.

It was more than Bruce had ever had any right of asking of him at fifteen but it was how fate had thrown its dices.

Nightwing had out-grown it, Tim was half-way out of it and Damian was meant for something else entirely.

Jason died a Robin and his memory would forever be anchored to the suit framed in the batcave and in the memory of the father who mourned his son even at his return.

“Why am I _here_?” he demands, green swirling against blue.

_Pit madness, _Bruce had named it when he found out just what Talia al Ghul had done to bring his mind back after he’d clawed his way out of his grave.

“I told you,” Dick says, cautious but with firmness. “I want to talk to you and you keep running away.”

“So _kidnapping me_ was the solution!?” Jason demands harshly.

They’re both wet, dark hair slick and plastered down, and they’ve never looked more like brothers, Barbara thinks, measuring the situation carefully.

“Are you hungry?” she asks and Jason’s eyes snaps towards her, something like disbelief filling his gaze and making him look years younger. “My treat,” she offers with a small curve of her lips.

“_Fuck,” _he breathes with feeling, shoulders hunched and keeping a careful distance from Dick. “Fine,” he grits out. “_Fine._”

Dick does not slump but it’s a near thing and Barbara pretends not to notice his eyes fill with a desperate sort of thankfulness as she draws her phone from her pocket to make the call.

Jason slides down against the wall as they wait, mouth pulling in a grimace as he shifted arms wrenched back, but Dick makes no move to offer to remove them where he hovers, tense and watchful with desperate eyes on the younger.

“How you’ve been?” she asks Jason and he bares his teeth.

“Peachy,” he bites out. “Really been feeling the love lately.”

His eyes dip briefly to the chair she’s in but there’s no judgement in his eyes and she wonders who out of them had told him about what went down between her and the Joker.

“I hear you’re doing your own thing these days – the name Oracle is whispered with _terror_.” There’s appreciation in his voice, rough but there, and Barbara blinks at him in surprise. “Suits you much better than Batgirl ever did.”

“So you say, _Red Hood._” He snorts, green flaring and then settling.

She’d never been his Batgirl, he’d never had one, but she’d been the closest to hinting at what might have been. The partner who was supposed to stand by Robin.

It isn’t so strange to think that he’d come to resent the title.

“Barbs is brilliant,” Dick says with genuine feeling. “I don’t think we’d manage even half of what we do without her.”

“I’m surprised you tie your fucking shoelaces in the morning without help,” Jason snaps.

Dick laughs and Jason jerks at the sound, eyes flashing before they averted away from them both.

Barbara wonders how it is that Bruce don’t see how desperately this bruised boy clings to their family even now, back from the dead, back in Gotham, his body painted and broken in the hands of his father and still – _here_ when he could have left the moment Bruce made his stance clear.

The food arrives and Dick steals it as she pays, spreading it out grandly on her living room table while Jason pushes up on his feet as the door closes.

She beckons for him and his back knots as he turns around, allowing her to cut through the zip ties with a knife she draws from the inside of her boot.

She half-expects him to run but he takes a broad step around Dick and sinks into the very corner of the couch, rubbing at his wrists where the skin had torn raw in places from the rough treatment.

Dick winces at the sight as he sinks down, giving Jason the space he craves without mushing himself into the corner, careful now as green tainted eyes scanned over the food before grabbing for the pad thai and a pair of chopsticks, wasting no time in cramming it into his mouth as Barbara rolled up opposite them both.

“I hear you’re working with Roy Harper these days,” Barbara comments as she pops a shrimp into her mouth, Dick already half-way through a chicken and noodle combo.

“And Koriand’r,” Jason admits after a wary stare, clearly suspecting she already knew as much, and right.

She still has Roy Harper’s phone number saved but she’d put it in the ICE tag she kept for the bat family.

“He has a daughter, doesn’t he?” Dick asks around a mouthful.

“Lian,” Jason says gruffly but – clearly fond, a look that flashes strange but eases some of the green. “He’s a good father,” he tacks on, almost challengingly,

“Better than Bruce, that’s for sure,” Dick says and Jason jerks, turning wide-eyes on the other.

“What?” he breathes. “Dickie-“

“That’s why I’ve been trying to get hold of you, Little Wing,” he sighs, scrubbing a frustrated hand over his face. “I saw – we all saw what happened after Penguin and we didn’t – even _Damian_ wasn’t happy about what he did.”

Jason gives him a long disbelieving look and then he laughs. “Fuck, never thought I’d see the day Dickiebird disagreed with b-man.”

“He beat you half to death, Jay,” Dick says a bit helplessly. “That never should have happened.”

Jason bares his teeth. “I broke his rule.”

“You didn’t,” Barbara disagrees. “Penguin lived. You moved your gun at the last moment.”

Something dark flashes in green stained eyes. “You don’t have any proof.” It’s a weak rebuttal but not a disagreement and Barbara stares at him until he looks away, chewing aggressively at a piece of meat.

“I told him, you know?" Dick says. "We’re not really on speaking terms at the moment.”

“Wait- wait, you’re the reason he was all-“ Jason touches a hand to his mouth and Barbara recalls the recent pictures of Batman with his lip split and jaw bruised.

“He shouldn’t have done what he did – Selina leaving him on the altar was no reason to hurt you like that.” Dick’s eyes darkens, satisfaction in his voice. “So, yes, I hit him.”

“Alfie must have enjoyed that.”

“He gave me a sandwich and a thermos as I left,” Dick admits and Jason snorts, laughter shaking his chest and disbelief clear in his gaze, something different dipping into his eyes as he looks to the elder, softer but also wary.

“If I knew that was what you wanted to tell me I’d let myself get kidnapped,” he says and it’s the closest thing to a _thank you_ he’d admit to.

Dick brightens, nearly blinding in his smile as he reaches out and gives dark hair a ruffle to a miniscule twitch and a hand slapping it away half-heartedly.

_Idiots, _Barbara thinks, just a tad fondly.

-

That night Barbara listens to Dick pad about, fishing for the clothes in the drawer she kept for him in her apartment before he slipped in beside her.

He hesitates but she reaches for him and gives his arm a little tug and he’s soon wrapped around her, mindful of the bag of her catheter on her hip as he did his best to enfold her.

“You think I did okay?” he asks her, breath warm against her neck.

“More than okay,” she says, already half-asleep. “Maybe a bit less kidnapping next time.”

He tightens his grip, lips pressing against her skin.

-

Red Hood is violence and he’s cruelty but he’s also a hero to those who have little and in Crime Alley his name is whispered with reverence.

Jason Todd is hurt and vulnerability and snapping teeth and he’s turning up at her apartment with an increasing frequency.

Dick too – but he’s always come and gone as he wished, their relationship a private thing of acknowledgement that they both had their things to run. He’d kept residence in Bludhaven for a long time but now he was here and close and she saw no reason to turn him away.

They slip into old roles easily enough but now there’s Jason, too, dinners with the three of them and she comes to wake up on more than one occasion to the smell of pancakes or waffles or both.

It's surprisingly good.

“Alfie taught me,” Jason tells her one such morning. “I used to beg him to teach me all kinds of things when I moved into the manor. Wanted to do something to make right for my stay.”

Dick is a disaster in the kitchen and Barbara just doesn’t like cooking.

She finds it a fair trade in all.

There’s also something about seeing the feared Red Hood in boxers and t-shirt and a yellow frilly apron that she has no idea where it came from that makes her soft in a way that she’ll never admit to.

“You can cook whenever,” Dick assures him, a bit feverishly, maple syrup drenching his pancakes in a way that Alfred was sure to despair over if he knew.

Jason balances it up, introduces fresh fruit with something of a shy smile when they compliment him, shoulders relaxing as he finds his place in their rhythm and dynamic.

He fits here, oddly, Barbara finds – eyes lingering on the personal frequency to the Red Hood that had appeared on her screen, blinking beside Nightwing's as they worked together on a trafficking ring involving the Black Mask.

-

She’s Oracle, remade by her own hands into something to take pride in.

But she’s also Barbara Gordon, will-full and stubborn, clever and brilliant – she burns bright and she burns hard.

“You can join us, you know?” she tells Jason one evening when he’s fluffing out his pillow on the couch. “There’s room enough for all three of us.”

He stills, eyes more blue than green darting up with vulnerability and a flush to his cheeks that grow as he takes in the sight of her in a well-worn t-shirt and a pair of Dick’s boxers, hair undone and falling down her shoulders.

“Think about it,” she says as he opens his mouth and slides back into the room where Dick has already sprawled out in a pair of sweatpants, eyes lingering on her.

“You sure?” he asks her.

“Are you?” she challenges and his mouth quirks, softening.

“You’re something else, Barbs,” he tells her as she hoists herself up and shuffles until she’s in the middle, a single pillow laid out in invitation to her right as she manoeuvres her legs beneath the soft covers and relaxes back.

He turns, pushing up just enough to hover his face above hers, tucking a stray curl behind her ear before claiming her lips in a soft kiss.

A throat clears behind them and Barbara smiles against his lips before he draws back, eyes glittering.

“Took your time, Little Wing,” Dick teases.

Jason lingers, watching them both for a moment longer before he scoffs and draws himself up on the bed in a simple t-shirt and dark boxers and collapses down beside Barbara, shuffling just enough to press his forehead against her arm.

She reaches out and gives his ear a little tug until she finds those bright eyes of his, the green glowing soft in the darkness in a way that’s almost cat-like.

“Come here,” she says and draws him up until he’s echoing Dick only moments ago and claims his lips, chapped and not nearly as soft as Dick’s but just as right as he draws a shuddering breath before, slowly, hesitantly, parting his lips for her with a groan and a ripple of his muscles as she grasped firmly at the back of his neck.

Dick makes a noise beside them as they part, his eyes dark with hunger.

“My turn,” he says and claims Jason’s mouth to a soft sound from the younger man who surrenders willingly, here, with just the two of them to see. 

Barbara’s eyes are soft, fingers ghosting up the pale scarred belly stretched out over her, touching at the end of the large Y still rough from the autopsy that had marked his death and trailing it up, tugging at his shirt to get it over his head and he relinquishes it willingly, gasping as he draws from Dick with a shudder.

“Are you sure?” he asks them both.

They pull him down in response, draws him in, touching him, marking him with bites and bruises amidst the violence painted on his body and he succumbs to them both in a way that is both beautiful and aching.

_Ours,_ they tell him as he jerks into their hands, fingers inside of him, around him, pupils dilated and eyes glowing.

_Yours,_ he tells them as he parts his legs and allows Dick to push into him as Barbara sinks down on him, back bowed and a tangle of names on his lips as he digs his fingers into the sheets with a gasp.

-

Theirs are a history of names and identities and violence but they're family and sometimes more and they find warmth and comfort in each other in a world that looks to tear them down.

**Author's Note:**

> It's been awhile since I haunted the DC fandom but I love these three geeks and I found this half-finished in my docs.
> 
> I've always found Barbara a very interesting character and I hope I made her justice here. I've never written anything from her POV before but I liked it and I think it worked well with what I wanted this to be.
> 
> I hang about tumblr as artsy-death if you're about there. 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed!


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